Post Politics Now Warnock, Walker make final pitches in Georgia Senate runoff

Arizona officials on Monday certified the results of the state’s midterm elections, nearly a month after they took place. The state had been in turmoil for several weeks, with one county flouting a deadline to certify its results and election officials in other counties facing threats for going through with what used to be a procedural formality.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democrat who defeated Republican Kari Lake in the race for governor, signed paperwork Monday morning formalizing acceptance of the election results. Hobbs urged the public to have confidence in the election, despite well-known figures, including Lake, continuing to criticize and cast doubt on the integrity of the process.

Former president Donald Trump’s political action committee is paying legal bills for some key witnesses involved in the Justice Department investigation of whether Trump mishandled classified documents, obstructed the investigation or destroyed government records, according to people familiar with the matter.

As Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey and Isaac Stanley-Becker report, at least two key witnesses are represented by Brand Woodward Law, which according to public records has been paid more than $100,000 by Trump’s Save America PAC. Stan Brand, the top lawyer at the firm, said there is nothing improper about the PAC paying legal bills for witnesses in the investigation. Another lawyer not involved in the case, however, said it could encourage witnesses to not cooperate.

President Biden called into an Atlanta-based radio station on Monday, urging listeners to support Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) in Tuesday’s runoff election, arguing that Democrats are delivering the kinds of benefits Americans can see in their everyday lives, like cheaper insulin and hearing aids.

“It really is critical because, look, all the things that Reverend Warnock has supported are things that the people of Georgia care a great deal about,” Biden said during an appearance on the Atlanta-based radio station Majic 107.5.

Gray Rohrer of the news outlet Florida Politics was in the courtroom last week as staffers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) were asked an interesting question: What does “woke” mean? The federal court in Tallahassee where the question came up doesn’t allow for recordings, Rohrer told The Washington Post’s Philip Bump, but he jotted down the offered responses in his notebook.

Ryan Newman, DeSantis’s general counsel, said the term referred to “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.” Taryn Fenske, DeSantis’s communications director, said that “woke” was “a slang term for … progressive activism,” adding that the term also referred to a belief that there were systemic injustices in the United States.

Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have outlined a plan that would provide a path to legalization for 2 million undocumented immigrants known as “Dreamers” if passed, as well as allocate money for border security, the hiring of more officers and pay raises for agents. The proposal also includes changes to the nation’s asylum process, and would keep Title 42, used by U.S. border officials to quickly expel migrants in the coronavirus pandemic, in place until regional processing centers are built to house them.

CALHOUN, Ga. — Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker on Monday made a quick campaign stop at a Buc-ee’s, one of a popular chain of country stores and gas stations, to meet and greet supporters ahead of the runoff election Tuesday against Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D).

Walker was met by dozens of supporters who stopped him throughout the store to take photos, shake hands and express support for his candidacy. Several mentioned they had already cast their ballots for him during early voting, and others reminisced about his record as a Heisman Trophy-winning running back at the University of Georgia in 1982.

Tuesday’s showdown between Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, Matthew Brown writes, is the product of an unusual general-election runoff system that was pushed by a powerful Georgia segregationist who sought to blunt the power of Black voters in the 1960s.

As Matt notes, while 10 states use runoffs in primary elections, Georgia and Louisiana are the only two that do so in general elections. Georgia’s system was created in 1964 at the urging of Denmark Groover, who blamed Black voters for a reelection loss and proposed runoffs. Groover later acknowledged the runoff system was intended to suppress Black political representation.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) will skip the White House’s congressional ball on Monday night to protest President Biden’s plan to shuffle the Democratic Party’s primary calendar in a way that would require her state to share a date with Nevada.

On Friday, the Democratic National Committee voted to make South Carolina the first state to hold a 2024 nomination contest, followed three days later by New Hampshire and Nevada on Feb. 6. This new order would end decades of tradition in which Iowa and New Hampshire held the first two slots for Democratic and Republican nominating contests.